Acosol, the public water company dependent on the Association of Municipalities of the Western Costa del Sol, which promotes the Golf Observatory together with the Royal Andalusian Golf Federation and the Chair of Golf Tourism at the University of Malaga have presented the first study on the irrigation of golf courses with reclaimed water and has shown the environmental and economic benefits, as well as savings, of using recycled water for this purpose.
The study has characterized the area through the description of the Andalusian Mediterranean Basins, its water balance and exploitation system; the geographical framing of the municipalities in which its industrial and agricultural specialization has been pointed out through the calculation of the Nelson index and the description of its golf courses through economic variables (GVA and employment), occupied surface area, quantity and type of water consumed and irrigation efficiency.
Based on these variables, the agricultural and industrial activities present were also characterized in order to carry out a correlational analysis. This, in turn, has allowed a comparative analysis under the hypothesis of using reclaimed water in crops and correlation of the economic activities associated with the fields, whether in hotel or residential tourism models.
This study methodology has allowed to obtain a series of “very interesting” results and conclusions, as indicated by the president of the Association of Municipalities of the Costa del Sol and Acosol, Margarita del Cid, who has stressed that such studies “show the success in collaboration with other institutions involved in the Golf Observatory”. In this report, she stressed that it highlights the suitability of irrigation of golf courses with reclaimed water.
For the CEO of Acosol, Manuel Cardeña, this project is the first of many that will go in this line. “Acosol will be part of and lead initiatives at the provincial, regional and, in the near future, national level, thanks to the work it does in the irrigation of golf courses using reclaimed water,” he said.
According to the president of the Royal Golf Federation of Andalusia, Pablo Mansilla, the Observatory should serve as a dissemination tool aimed at those who are not related to the golf sector or who do not think they are. “It has to be able to make society see the importance of the golf sector for the Andalusian economy and the Costa del Sol; the generation of employment and wealth it produces and, among other issues, its real environmental impact,” he said.
For her part, Josefa García, director of the Chair of Golf Tourism at the University of Malaga (UMA) and vice-dean of the Faculty of Tourism, indicated that they are intensifying the relationship with the business fabric to become “an engine of economic and social development, overcoming that ancestral conception that the University and society walk on separate paths”. The research is not limited to the present, but uses estimates to 2027 of water consumption according to the forecasts made for the fields and associated activities.
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